All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers.

All parents damage their children. This was their life together. Neglect. Violence. Silence.

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.

The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.

All Children Have Brain Damage!

We spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply where we simply did not know what to do.

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

He was the child of a father who was not his father; but also the child of a time which damaged reality so badly that nobody ever managed to put it together again;

As parents, we may as well accept that we will “lose it” at times. Perfect equanimity is beyond us. Temporary breaks in the relationship with the child are inevitable and are not in themselves harmful, unless they are frequent and catastrophic. The real harm is inflicted when the parent makes the child work at reestablishing contact, as in forcing a child to apologize before granting “forgiveness.” There

That’s what fathers do if they don’t heal their wounds. They wound their children in the same place.

His father, who for years had refused to speak to Eddie, now lacked the strength to even try. He watched his son with heavy-lidded eyes. Eddie, after struggling to find even one sentence to say, did the only thing he could think of to do: He held up his hands and showed his father his grease-stained fingertips.

Eli did not manage his household according to God’s rules for family government. He followed his own judgment. The fond father overlooked the faults and sins of his sons in their childhood, flattering himself that after a time they would outgrow their evil tendencies. Many are now making a similar mistake. They think they know a better way of training their children than that which God has given in his word. They foster wrong tendencies in them, urging as an excuse, “They are too young to be punished. Wait till they become older, and can be reasoned with.” Thus wrong habits are left to strengthen until they become [579] second nature. The children grow up without restraint, with traits of character that are a lifelong curse to them and are liable to be reproduced in others.

Children inherit their parents' madness.

Some Parents Are Responsible for Disrespect — When parents permit a child to show them disrespect in childhood, allowing them to speak pettishly and even harshly, there will be a dreadful harvest to be reaped in after years. When parents fail to require prompt and perfect obedience in their children, they fail to lay the right foundation of character in their little ones. They prepare their children to dishonor them when they are old, and bring sorrow to their hearts when they are nearing the grave, unless the grace of Christ changes the hearts and transforms the characters of their children. [362]